blw wrote:
I'm building the 1/350 Very Fire / Blue Ridge Montana. I'm using GMM Missouri PE to upgrade, and I presume that I'll need to supplement with quite a bit of railing as the kit has no railings for the main deck, just railings for the 01 deck and superstructure. One thing that is pretty obvious is that the 5" gun houses are quite a bit wider (35%) than those found on Iowas and every other ship with twin 5"/38's. I realize that they're 5"/54's, but that's not the point.
The main issue is that it appears that the center of rotation of the 5"/54's is placed in the same place as the 5"/38's on the Missouri. That places the edge of the gun houses hanging over the ocean. Not only is that almost certainly unrealistic, it makes for oddball situations with the railings. This might be one reason why there are no main deck railings included? I think what I'm going to do is simply to relocate the gun houses back toward the centerline of the ship, allowing them to clear the railings. There is enough room to do this.
I guess my main question is if I shouldn't also raise the outboard gun houses, which is more like what is seen on Iowas. Any opinions on this?
You are correct. A NAVSEA engineer involved with the Iowa-class program said the twin 5"/54s slated for the Iowas in the 1990s were slightly
longer than the 38 caliber mounts. The structure would have been modified slightly to clear the mounts, but it's not a big deal. The drawings in the 1980s were to make 5"/38 caliber mounts that were slightly longer but not wider.
Otherwise, with the Iowas in the 1990s, swapping them with Mk45 mounts would have been legit.